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Social Anxiety News

One more warm day before the temperature plummets twenty degrees tonight! On tap for a cold Saturday in our social anxiety therapy group, is fully understanding and feeling the power of a paradox -- when you first realize that the solutions to your anxiety come from doing the OPPOSITE of what you've been doing all your life. Many people have had major breakthroughs as this knowledge becomes so strong and rational that it is felt throughout your entire body.

The social anxiety group planned and is participating in social activities together this week. They chose to hike Lookout Mountain (small hike), go to a sports bar and watch the SuperBowl, go mini-golfing, and have a Game Night/Poker Night at one of the member's homes. The group plans their activities, and they go to the ones they want. (Nothing is forced on people.) But by hanging out with other social anxiety people, they can practice many of the cognitive strategies -- and help each other out with them. For example, several of the new group members need to s

Our current CBT social anxiety group is at lunch. But I want to tell you what went on this morning, and the powerful cognitive progress that was made, We reviewed all the previous "foundational" material, but made it much stronger this week with the addition of the "Fighting Paradox" concept, an essential cognitive therapy idea that has to be learned and practiced to really get people over social anxiety. I am time-limited now, but wanted to jot this down until I can explain more fully. This new CBT group is doing quite well, and we want this progress to

We all engage in "Self-fulfilling prophecies" -- not by choice but by the way the social anxiety brain warps reality. It makes it easier to see that we can learn to think rationally and get out of these negative self-fulfilling prophecies, which only make it harder for us if we believe automatic negative thoughts and beliefs (ANTs).

The site that has sponsored us for the past 15 years, The Social Anxiety Institute, will be coming online completely updated soon -- in February if all goes well. The Institute site publishes five days a week on Facebook and runs all-year long continuous CBT programs for social anxiety.

Our Facebook message for the day contains a lot of important information for overcoming social anxiety:

For all the problems, like social anxiety, that are caused by irrational beliefs and emotions, the ONLY solution is to learn how to get better. Learning is a cognitive process, and we must OVERLEARN the solutions. Any therapy that works for social anxiety must change the brain itself. Only a learning, or cognitive, therapy can do this.

We have three interns with us at the present time, and the fourth should join us next week. We are finishing up the work of the three updated websites about anxiety, and will be working on more effective ways to get effective, proven therapy out to people. We are thankful to our interns for their time and efforts, and they will be gaining a great deal of knowledge by working on the projects ahead of them. We are interested in future students who wish to intern with us. At present, the student would need to live in the metropolitan Phoenix area and be able

The Social Anxiety Institute begins its 20th year of continous group therapy for social anxiety, this Saturday by welcoming new members for the local group program, virtually all of who moved here from other states, due to lack of treatment availability where they lived. The all-day Saturday group is welcoming people from Washington State, Oregon, California, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. The new group begins Saturday, January 26th

Our anxiety team is beginning to form, and our first official week is next week. We have five great, talented volunteers and people doing internships for various universities and for admittance to graduate schools. A big thank you to our new Anxiety Team. We will be putting together the new therapy and the new website modules that will be necessary to help more people over the internet.

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The Social Anxiety Association

The Social Anxiety Association is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 to meet the growing needs of people with social anxiety. The SAA became inactive for several years due to lack of resources. We are in the process of re-doing our website, listing all active, structured CBT groups for social anxiety, and renewing all our licenses. Major changes will be happening by the end of 2013. We publish new web content -- concerning social anxiety -- almost daily on the site now.

The Social Anxiety Institute is the largest website on the internet about social anxiety disorder (social phobia). Therapy programs have run at the Institute full-time since 1994. Major new help for overcoming social anxiety is under development and will be introduced in 2013.

Guidelines for listing social anxiety groups on this site. We cannot officially endorse groups, so check them out thoroughly. We ask that they be groups that are operating, have a definite leader, and are thoroughly structured. Social anxiety therapy groups are very different than the groups that operate for other mental health conditions.